Vietnamese evacuees in 1975: starting from scratch

It was late April 1975 when refugee camps sprang up across the U.S. to shelter 100,000-plus Vietnamese who fled after the fall of Saigon. At Camp Pendleton, with just 36 hours’ notice, enlisted crews swept the grounds, put down plywood floors, set up hundreds of tents and thousands of cots and stocked pantries for evacuees who were unfamiliar with America’s culture and language, and even the taste of fried chicken.